This invention relates generally to infant-bearing devices such as carriages, strollers, carseats, playpens, high chairs or the like and more paticularly concerns remote control systems for parental or custodial monitoring of the presence or absence of an infant in or from an infant bearing device.
Systems presently exist for long and short term monitoring of occupancy of adult bearing devices, such as hospital beds, wheelchairs, and the like. Devices of this type are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,484,043 and 4,565,910; and in U.S. patent applications Ser. No. 08/311,418 entitled "Mobile Battery Powered Patient Bed and Chair Occupancy Monitoring System and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/311,588, entitled "Hard-Wired Monitoring System for Hospital Bed or Short Term Care Patients", both filed by the present assignee on Sep. 23, 1994. None of these known devices is suitable for reducing the risks of infant abduction from an infant bearing device or to enhance the opportunity to detect the situation and/or minister to the needs of an infant who has become unsatisfactorily positioned in or fallen from a high chair, carseat or the
Among other reasons, these known systems are not suitable for monitoring an infant's occupancy of an infant bearing device because they can be locally manipulated to disconnect or disarm the device. Many are hard-wired and do not permit mobility of the infant bearing device. They are generally not programmable and, whether programmable or not, are designed to operate in response to events likely to occur in the monitoring of an adult and not to meet the requirements imposed in monitoring an infant.
It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide a system for monitoring the occupancy of an infant in an infant-bearing device. A further object of this invention is to provide a remotely controlled system for monitoring the occupancy of an infant in an infant-bearing device. Yet another object of this invention is to provide a system for monitoring the position of an infant in an infant bearing device. A further object of this invention is to provide a system which emits an audible alarm tending to discourage infant abduction. Another object of this invention is to provide a system which emits an alarm which is not unduly oppressive to an infant when the infant ceases occupancy of an infant bearing device. And it is an object of this invention to provide a system not easily detectable by third parties for monitoring the occupancy of an infant-bearing device.